Mindfulness and Madness

Staying sane without sitting still

I began my doctoral studies on September 9, 1976. My first son was born three days later. When people ask how I got through a Ph.D. program with an infant, I give everyone the same answer, “I’m not sure I could have gotten through without him.”

Mindfulness is usually described in its pure form. The sitting still, emptying of one’s mind, focusing on breath and sensory awareness, letting the internal experience of this moment exist in all its fullness, without judgment, reactions or thoughts interfering. This is calming, soothing, centering if one is practiced enough to do it well. But it is not easy.

I would have laughed years ago if you had asked me whether a mindfulness practice got me through those years as a new Mom/graduate student. Sitting still was rarely possible, emptying my mind dangerous in either role. But in truth, I was exercising a different kind of mindfulness. I was learning an active mindfulness, a focused attention with deep, profound presence, a diving into every experience letting it fill all the space I had to give it. And a brand-new baby was an extraordinary teacher.

Keeping up with the news these days is a form of madness. I admit to sitting on the edge, unable to “not know”, but unwilling to forfeit my peace of mind in trade. And everywhere I go, people are expressing their own fear, apprehension, distress. How do we all not go mad?

Some guidelines I learned at the changing table might help:

1. Do not entertain catastrophic thinking. What will you do if.?. What will you do when...? I learned to answer those questions simply. “This is what I’m doing now, I will solve that when/if I need to, but I won’t waste today’s brain space on hypotheticals, and I don’t think more than a few months ahead.” Much of what is happening in DJT’s world is moving through the courts, reversing itself, running into resistance on every level. We cannot know the future, but we must strive to use today’s energy wisely to create it

2. Separate constructive vs destructive worrying. Constructive worry includes problem solving, gaming strategies, looking for alternatives and resources you might need to employ if/when something life-changing happens. Constructive worrying reduces distress, offers handholds that are reassuring, and shapes initial actions in draft form. So, call your kids, your parents, or your financial advisor and game out solutions for job loss, social security loss or the like. If nothing else, it will help to know you have team of support around you. Destructive worry, on the other hand, carries us to worst case scenarios, ruminates about disaster, and sometimes refuses to seek information out of fear that it will not be reassuring. This is paralysis by fear and is the short cut to madness.

3. Do whatever you do with the deepest intensity you can find. Let hypervigilance go or fight it when it threatens this moment. The other issues will be there when you return. Learning how to compartmentalize in healthy ways is not ignoring reality, it is taking control of it.

4. Practice shifting gears. It gets easier with time to Turn on/turn off both feelings and thoughts. Permission to do it comes first, and that is often hardest to give ourselves. Remind yourself that healthy gear shifting builds resilience, and like psychic weightlifting, develops emotional strength.

That small infant taught me much about managing my energy, maintaining perspective, and the life-giving power of active mindfulness in his first few years of life.

Twenty-seven years later he taught me another lesson relevant to this moment. When his wife was diagnosed with a brain tumor just a year into their marriage, he asked me to help him answer a simple question, “If we go ahead and have children, will I be a single father in10 years?”

But before I could research the answer, he called to say, “Never mind Mom. We are going to fight this tumor. But if we do not go ahead with the lives we planned, then the tumor has already won.”

I lean on those words often now. I will not sit back and let the destruction of democracy win. I will continue to write, and do whatever small things I can, and I will support the big things others will do to fight back. But in the meantime, I will choose to live my life with intensity and with joy.

That is my resistance.